Current events in the words of the students of Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

VGSoM Health

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”. But what if you skip breakfast? It reverses the age old saying. A recent study by a group of American researches found out that those who eat breakfast daily are less likely to have cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and poor nutrition related diseases.

The researches have suggested that the time we eat our meal is equally important as what we eat. Meal timing affects health by impacting the body’s internal clock. The study found that those who skip breakfast have 27% more risk of getting heart attacks and 18% more risk of getting strokes. The research also found that late night snacks after dinner results obesity. It adds unnecessary calories.

Breakfast is considered as the most important meal of the day. The name itself indicates that it breaks a long fast, the large gap resulting because of a night sleep. Skipping breakfast is a very common practise among the teens, college going adults and office goers. Many believe that small snacks and meals in regular intervals throughout a day is a good practice but often these small meals turn into meal sized meals. The researches have suggested that planning a meal beforehand controls the amount of intake. This also combats emotional eating a phenomenon which triggers our taste buds to eat more calories with low nutritional value. So lets make it a routine to not miss the breakfast for some extra minutes of sleep.

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

The investment in health sector is extremely important for the holistic progress of the world. With a lot of countries agreeing to product patent agreement, new avenues are created for the global pharmaceutical giants to invest in those respective countries’ health sectors.

If the global media were your only source of information, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world’s biggest health concern right now is the Zika virus, or that last year it was Ebola – or SARS and the Avian Flu before that.

When it comes to public health, the countries where the world’s poorest billion people live spend, on average, a measly $15 annually per person. Each year, premature death – fatalities before the age of 70 – will claim around nine million lives in low-income countries like Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Haiti. Another 19 million people will die early in lower middle-income countries like India, Nigeria, and Guatemala. In total, these poorest countries account for about half of the world’s population.

By 2030, increasing prosperity will reduce the total number of annual premature deaths from 28 million to 24 million, despite the addition of nearly a billion people. But we could do better if we could improve health-care delivery.

Improving health systems’ responsiveness to these big killers would likely lead to advances that could help in other areas. When Ebola erupted in West Africa last year, the countries suffering most had very poor general health provision. With a better local health service, the disease could have been stopped faster –and possibly never would have taken hold in the first place.

Above all, we should ensure that health policy decisions are based on sound evidence, so that we truly do the most with every dollar spent. In practice, this would not mean ignoring the latest virus in the news; but it would almost certainly mean recognizing that most of our resources should go elsewhere.

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

According to the recent news, the World Health Organization aims to reduce to zero by 2020 the number of children diagnosed with leprosy and related deformities. The decision is part of a new strategy launched against leprosy by the global health body, which also called for stronger commitments and accelerated efforts to stop disease transmission and end associated discrimination and stigma, to achieve a world free of leprosy. The new strategy also aims to reduce the rate of newly-diagnosed leprosy patients with visible deformities to less than one per million; and ensure that all legislation that allows for discrimination on the basis of leprosy is overturned

“The key interventions needed to achieve the targets include detecting cases early before visible disabilities occur, with a special focus on children as a way to reduce disabilities and reduce transmission, targeting detection among higher risk groups through campaigns in highly endemic areas or communities, and improving health care coverage and access for marginalised population,” said Ms Khetrapal.

She said screening all close contacts of leprosy affected people, promoting a shorter and uniform treatment regime, and incorporating specific interventions against stigma and discrimination are the other strategic interventions that endemic countries need to include in their national plans to meet the new targets.

The strategy focuses on equity and universal health coverage which will contribute to reaching Sustainable Development Goals on health.According to the health data, the main and continuing challenges to leprosy control have been the delay in detection of new patients and persisting discrimination against people affected by leprosy which has ensured continued transmission of the disease.

India, Brazil and Indonesia account for 81 percent of the newly diagnosed and reported cases globally. Leprosy was eliminated globally in the year 2000 with the disease prevalence rate dropping to below one per 10,000 population.Though all countries have achieved this rate at the national level, at the sub-national level, it remains an unfinished agenda.

Leprosy continues to afflict the vulnerable, causing life-long disabilities in many patients, subjecting them to discrimination, stigma and a life marred with social and economic hardships.